


I Will Dare

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 21:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15519291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: “It’s happened a lot, lately. Winding up here, though she wouldn’t call it regular. She hasn’t been regular about it since the very beginning, and even then, she wonders. Thinking back to how soon her dad went tumbling. How soon the things people do to cope fell by the wayside. She wonders if her visits ever earned the word regular.”





	I Will Dare

**Author's Note:**

> July Thing-A-Month. Set just after After the Storm (5 x 01).

 

It’s hot today. Too hot for the leather jacket she’s already stripped off, or even the jeans she wishes she could. It’s too hot for her heavy boots, but she’d decided to ride out here.

That’s not quite true. She’d decided to ride and wound up here with sweat trickling down her spine and the backs of her knees. It’s pooling behind her ears and making her scalp itch as she picks her way among the crowd of gravestones.

It’s happened a lot, lately. Winding up here, though she wouldn’t call it regular. She hasn’t been regular about it since the very beginning, and even then, she wonders. Thinking back to how soon her dad went tumbling. How soon the things people do to cope fell by the wayside. She wonders if her visits ever earned the word regular.

She stumbles. Her square, steel toe catches on scrollwork flaring out from the base of a stone, half hidden by a pot of flowers resting on the well-kept swell of green turf.

She’s a little lost. She’s turned around and hot and frustrated, and what is she doing here, anyway? What _has_ she been doing here these last few weeks when she’s made her choice?

 _I just want you_.

What’s she been doing here when she has someone to come home to any night she likes? Someone’s voice down the line, no matter how late or how early, whenever she needs it. What is she actually _doing?_

She turns one way, then the other. Toward the sun just starting its downward drift, then towardthe first hint of lilac in the sky. She turns her back on the well-kept stones and all the different ways they makes her feel guilty.

She swipes a hand over the back of her neck and hates the slick feeling of sweat, the hair plastered to her skin. She hates the thought of struggling back into it all. Jacket and helmet and everything tucked into everything else.

She turns again, a three-quarter circle until she thinks she’s pointed the right way. She thinks so, and she strikes out, sweat blind and burdened by more than just the heavy clothes that stick unpleasantly to her body.

This isn’t the right way. That’s obvious almost immediately. There’s no shoulder-to-shoulder army of granite for one thing. The mirror-polish of recent loss is long gone here, and most of the headstones are low to the ground. Most of them are simple oblongs, pockmarked and white once-upon-at-time, not the sober charcoal and gunmetal and smoke of where she’s just left. Where she meant to go in the first place.

Everything’s older here. The trees have crept in, with weary limbs and trunks like bent backs. Everything’s a little overgrown, if not quite forgotten by the grounds crew. By the distant figures walking up and down and up and down with their high-pitched machines, keeping the green at bay.

She hears one of them now, another living soul out of place in the distance. At odds with these monuments from another time and all their cryptic phrases.

They catch her eye, these letters not quite worn away. Not quite given over to time and rain and scouring wind. They draw her toward the ground, bending her head at first. Tugging her down into a crouch, then down to her knees entirely.

 _Tally And Void_ , the first says. The name and dates above are long gone, and the sweep of her fingers tells her the strange phrase is sure to follow soon, but it’s there for now. She squints to be sure, but it’s there, and she wonders what it means as she pushes back to her feet and moves on. She wonders what it ever could have meant.

 _Favor A Deal_. That’s the next one over. The next one she can read, anyway, and she thinks of Saint Peter at the gate. She thinks of a cartoon devil with horns and a pitchfork, and some poor soul caught in the middle.

 _Leave It Alone_. That one’s a quarter turn away. Just a pivot on the balls of her feet, and she almost takes a tumble at the sight of it. She sits back, hard and sudden, on her heels and still has to steady herself with a palm that comes down hard on the sharp corner of a nearby stone. 

She tries to rise, but she’s dizzy, suddenly, with more than the heat and her too-heavy clothes. She’s dizzy with the eerie message and its grim medium. It clangs together with her own thoughts—her own dissonant wonderings—and she wants to go. She wants not to have come at all. Today and all the times she’s wound up here in these few short weeks. She wants to have lived by and with and for the choice she’s made, but she’s dizzy here and now.

Closing her eyes doesn’t help. Far from it, it makes her list hard to one side and needs her other palm to steady her. Even then she’s crashing right to her knees, head and shoulders bowed over another stone. Over some other message from beyond, and she doesn’t want to look.

She tries not to look. She breathes through her nose and shakes a drop of sweat off the tip. She tries to look right through whatever it is she’s landed on now, but her brain is too quick. Her eyes snag on the letters, strung like green-black beads against the luminous white,made bold by green–black lichen, and everything goes still.The world stops spinning and the air sliding into her lungs is suddenly cool.

 _Tell A Love Dare_

She blinks against the sun, as its angle seems to shift all at once. She takes another breath and reads it again. She smiles when the letters stay true and reads it again, again, again. She grins to herself, a quiet, secret thing with her chin tucked right into her chest. She pushes to her feet and pulls out her phone. Her voice rushes down the line. His name dances right off the tip of her tongue before even he has a chance to say it.

“Castle. What are you doing?” She strikes out again. In the right direction, without hesitation. “What are you doing right now?”

 

* * *

He finds her sooner than he should be able to. Sooner than she’d expected, and not as soon as she’d hoped, the dark shape of him is making its way toward her. 

“Hey.” His voice is hushed. It’s quiet and happy, even though his brow wrinkles as he takes in her slightly bedraggled appearance.

“Hey.” She steps into his body, not really caring that she’s hot and sweaty. She drops the heavy leather jacket to the grass and winds her arms around him. “You found me quick.”

“Quick,” he repeats. There’s something sheepish in it. The word and the duck of his head. “You call, and I . . .”

She takes half a step back and looks up at him. She’s curious. Just curious, as though it’s her usual armor resting in heap between them.

“I’ve been here.”

The confession rushes out of him, before she can even think how strange it is. That he’s here, and she’s half expecting the admission. That it doesn’t feel like an incursion.

“Before.” He looks over her shoulder, then back at her, like days gone by might be one place or the other. “A long time ago. Just once.”

“Research.” Her chin goes up and down. A sharp nod, and that . . . hurts a little. Saying it out loud is like shaking it off. Trying to shake it off, even though it hurts. “Details. For the books.”

“Not the books,” he says, right away. Honest. He’s not playing defense any more than she is. “Nothing to do with that.”

“Why, then?” She rests her cheek against his chest. Enjoys the warmth of his body, even as the promise of a cool shower flickers behind her eyelids. Even as she feels this chapter winding down and she’s looking forward to the next. “Why a long time ago?”

“To pay my respects?”

He laughs at little at the rising inflection. It’s not quite right, and he knows it. She laughs, too. They both know it, and he’s quiet a minute. They’re quiet together, even though they’re both wondering. They’re both eager to know.

“To thank her.” He takes a step back from her. His palms slide slowly from her shoulder blades all the way to the tips of her fingers. “You sent me away, but even if you never . . . l wanted to thank her. For you.”

It’s profound. The simple admission. The moment with the sun still making its slow slide down the sky. Her clothes are too heavy and it’s hot. It’s still too hot, but it’s profound in ways she’s too tired to deal with right now.

“I want to go.” She crowds against him. She says it right in his ear. “Let’s go.”

“Yeah,” he says. He shakes himself head to toe. It stings, and she doesn’t mean it to, anymore than he did. “Of course, let’s go.”

“We’ll come back.” She slides her hand into his. She pulls him toward the lilac blooming in the sky. “I want to com back. With you, when I meant to. When I mean to wind up here.” She twists her body so it collides with his. She raises up on square, heavy, steel toes and tells him the whole sordid story. “We’ll come back.”

**Author's Note:**

> On Twitter, someone posted a painting his wife had done of gravestone rubbings from an old cemetery. The messages were beautiful and strange and inspired me. 


End file.
